Design of an improved Open-Face birdcage for human whole brain imaging at 5T

The clinical experience, especially for subjects with claustrophobia, is not friendly when using the conventional shielded birdcage head coils on the ultra-high field. The closed structure also does not better support motion detection and motion correction, and other MRI functional applications. In this work, an optimized Open-Face birdcage head coil were designed based on EM simulations. The transmit efficiency, B1 uniformity, and SAR efficiency of the facial open-window birdcage coil with different configurations and a conventional shielded birdcage coil are compared. Finally, an optimized Open-Face birdcage head coil was built and evaluated on a whole body 5T MRI scanner.